


What This Is

by OrphanText



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Androids, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrphanText/pseuds/OrphanText
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world is changing, and MI6 embraces a new time. Bond meets his new quartermaster, and feels as though he's been given a new toy.</p>
<p>Its all doomed to hell from the start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What This Is

**Author's Note:**

> Contains inaccuracies. First Bond fic. I don't like writing espionage in general because of all the inaccuracies I put in there, but here have an AU (I actually also do not like Sci-Fi in general).
> 
> Not beta-read. I would like to thank ice_evanesco for support throughout writing this.
> 
> I miss my android OC so much (don't worry I don't think there are any OCs in here).

In hindsight, he should have noticed it. Should have, were it not for the fact that he had been too busy caught up in his petty domestic spat, more interested in licking his own wounds and in tossing all the hurt back into _his_ face just to see _him_ flinch for once. Should have noticed, if he bothered to take his own head out of his own arse. Noticing things were what agents were good at. To see all the underlying signs of a tell-tale, to spot anomalies and to pick up hints and clues that were never always obvious to stay alive in the field, to always be a step ahead of the game. Agents were good at that, and double-ohs were superbly fantastic at that.

****

For once (and many more times) double-oh-seven wasn’t that superbly fantastic after all.

****

* * *

 

The first time they meet, it isn’t under the best of circumstances. A strike at their headquarters, a joke made at their expenses. It’s another mission, another madman, another game and the stakes are changing. He steps up to the board, and feels old, a chipped piece amongst the many others that are all so bright, and new, and still so clean. Old, but still a powerful piece—the old dog still has some tricks up his sleeves, and he would be damned if he stepped down simply because the times were changing.

****

New game, new rules, and even a brand new location for their headquarters to move to. He would probably adapt with time.

****

As though the bomb had destroyed more than morals and budgets and people’s lives, in its wake the new MI6 lies gleaming underground. Nothing is properly put together, yet, but there is enough for it to function, enough for him to know that when complete, it would be impressive. He doesn’t have an office here, not yet, and he eyes the new staff cubicles. Open floor plan, more space than anyone can use, glass and steel. He walks on.

****

Q-branch is immaculate. Unexpectedly immaculate. He steps into the brightly-lit room, doors hissing shut, a buzzing hive of restless energy. He pauses, forcing techies to stop, and to divert to avoid colliding into him, and really, when has Q-branch been so impressive? He considers the new tech and can only hope that it extends to his weapons, as well. He wouldn’t say no to a delicious new piece of tech to chew and puzzle over—if one could have it, why settle for less? A woman stops by him, re-directs him to where he was really supposed to go if he hadn’t been lost and pretending that he wasn’t, but no one knows that and his reputation is safe. Their quartermaster is expecting him and waiting.

****

His office is located a little further from Q-branch, down gleaming corridors behind further secured doors. He gets through without issue, the lock beeping affirmation and letting him through, and he steps in, and—oh.

****

The man (man?) turns, all dark curls and bright green eyes, and studies him. “Were you lost, double-oh-seven?”

****

Seems like new extended to their quartermaster, too.

****

* * *

 

He never eats, he never sleeps. In fact, he does nothing but work (and Bond, a little further down the calendar pages). He also doesn’t leave, but that might not have been a matter of choice for him.

****

He is dark curls, red lips, soft words and carefully pronounced vowels, a deceptively sharp mind and equally unforgiving tongue in a parcel. He is their tech, their quartermaster, their informative whirlwind and genius, and the only constant in the room he’s locked in.

****

Bond has learned pretty early on that this one was interesting.

****

Nothing about the quartermaster is really a secret. Strung up in the middle of the room like a puppet and illuminated by the screens before him, he makes for a rather strange sight, and if Bond dares, or cares, perhaps in the biblical sense. If he ever bothered to find out, Bond could probably have his make and model, manufacturer and class. As it was, and because he was clever enough to not keep it a secret, Bond never bothered. Instead, he watches him, directing information and cracking codes and secrets in the same breath, learns the nuances of his behavior, the hints to his moods.

****

He stands, wires snaking from around the room, connected to him from beneath his skin, beneath clothes that change every day. Bond finds it curious, but was never in a position to ask. The concept isn’t new, but the implementation is, and he supposes that the events have simply spurred MI6 to simply get on with it. Having been skeptical in the beginning, he had been all for the whole idea falling flat on its face. Now, with evidence before his eyes, with the increasing rates of success and improved efficiency and with said evidence lashing him with aforementioned sharp tongue, he was beginning to see that what they were asking for is possible. And with the quartermaster at the head of it, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

****

Three months in, and he offers his first name. The man simply nods in acknowledgement, but says and does nothing else.

****

Four months in and there is the offer of dinner, turned down.

****

Five months in and that was a bit of a blur.

****

The month after that had him hearing his name spoken in the same soft, velvet tones for the first time and it was better than he had dreamed.

****

Bond pauses at the door, all undignified bandages and bruises and a walking sign of disrespect to their medical department.

****

“James,” he says again, and there is a hint of a smile about his lips, and something else in his eyes that he cannot see. “Q.”

****

“Q,” Bond acknowledges.

****

Everything else that followed after was pretty much to plan.

****

* * *

 

The offer of dinner was brought up, turned down, and brought up again. Eventually Bond brings dinner in the form of takeaway, and sits down with it in the room, opening boxes and allowing the smells to speak for themselves. Q glares at him, and he grins, unrepentantly, and demonstrated his skill with chopsticks.

****

Minutes in, his patience is rewarded and Q’s resolve breaks.

****

“How does it taste like?”

****

He grins in the face of Q’s frustration, and tilts the box towards him, offering him a look at the contents. Q does, green eyes glancing towards it and back to Bond, questioningly. “Good?”

****

“But how does it taste like?” Q insisted, and Bond realizes that he may have possibly never eaten before.

****

“Would you like to try some?” The agent offers, and Q’s eyes dart to the wires and the screens in answer. “You have never done it, but they’ve never said that you can’t, it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

****

It was triumph, when Q finally leaned over to accept the small spoonful of food that Bond offered him, expression wary and cautious. And then, the look of sheer joy on Q’s face as he tasted for the first time in his life (life?), triumph lay forgotten in the wake of sudden overbearing protectiveness, and the need to keep this expression on Q’s face.

****

He commits it to memory.

****

* * *

 

The rules about interpersonal relationships at work are hazy at best, and the rules about this are completely lost in the grey fog. No procedures to follow, no regulations or past experiences to go by, and they’re operating blind. They kiss, and its nothing like what he had expected, if he even knew what to expect in the first place. Q is cold, and slender, and deliciously responsive to fingers dipping beneath cardigans and shirts to explore. They part, one of them hungry, the other warmer to the touch, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by the sentinels of MI6. Beneath watchful electronic eyes, it becomes something more heated, something more than simply a need to get off.

****

And of course, with every course of action, there is a repercussion.

****

He is hauled to stand before M’s new desk, rumpled, mussed, and absolutely unrepentant. New Q, new M, what else is new? He nods, and hums feigned interest to whatever the man has to say, and his mind is still underground, in the maze of tunnels and wires and the young man right in the middle of it.

****

Government initiation.

****

Brave new world.

****

* * *

 

It isn’t anything at all like what Bond was used to. This was something tender, something much more fragile and therefore so much more precious, and he yearns, dreams of taking him away one day. Free of the shadow and tangle of wire, and the ever-present hum of electronics, and perhaps to somewhere with sun and sea and sand. Somewhere beautiful.

****

He calls him Rapunzel, and Q does not understand. The agent brings in a brand new copy of a children’s book, sits with Q, and cracks the spine.

****

“I am nothing like Rapunzel,” Q says, ten minutes later. He sounds amused, and also a little insulted.

****

“You see me here,” Q says, gesturing to the expanse of the room, all quietly glowing lights and screens and security. “And you see me as a prisoner.”

****

“But while I am here, I am also out there. I have the world at my fingertips—more information than I would ever need. Cameras, and phones, and devices, and I’ve seen the world through your eyes. I may have never lived, or experienced it, but it is enough for me. I have what I need here.” He turns to look at a screen, watches the numbers scrolling through it. “I don’t need... that. This, this is enough. More than enough. Will you understand?”

****

Bond tries to imagine a life, dragged into existence by the means of human technology, living to serve their whims and never leaving. He tries, and fails, to understand.

****

He asks if Q knows about the consequence of detaching from the wires.

****

Q only smiles, fingertips tracing ports, fidgets with a brightly coloured wire. “Please don’t cut off my hair,” he says, and leaves it at that.

****

* * *

 

It garners attention. This, everything that this is, the wrong sort of right and the right sort of the wrong and all that. Monkey see, monkey tell. He can feel eyes on him each time he walks in, senses their speculation like a prickling on his skin. He meets approval and disapproval head on, never voiced, always seen, and continues to spend time with Q.

****

Articles and stories could be written on a sin that he will never be the first to commit.

****

People live, people die. Its all a little too short to think too much and waste time hesitating on something that he wants. He wants, he gets.

****

If Q knows of the attention that they’re getting, he does not show it.

****

“Morning, Q.”

****

“Morning, double-oh-seven. Are you ready for your mission?”

****

They are professionals, above all.

****

* * *

 

He remembers the feel of Q’s skin, pale and smooth and blemish-free beneath the cold light in a dark room they occupy all to themselves late into the night. The air is cold, and so is the body beneath him, and he tries, presses closers, breathes warmth onto that pale expanse of skin. He imagines that he is the one breathing life into Q, that he is the one who gives him what he needs to move, to stay alive. In a way, it is true.

****

A body so similar to his own and yet isn’t. Nothing about him a secret and yet he is a puzzle.

****

He lies awake on the hard ground, on cold metal flooring and cables and a blanket, and watches Q, lying on his side with cables snaking out of his back, his head, and watches those green irises glow blue.

****

Q isn’t human. Q never sleeps.

****

In those moments, he wonders what Q sees.

****

* * *

 

If rank were any indication of maturity, M would have much less on his plate than he currently did. As things were, one could continue to wish.

****

As it is, Bond is really just a kid beneath the muscles and finely tailored suits and dry wit.

****

As it is—

****

“I think we should stop this for awhile,” Q says quietly. “Stop seeing each other.”

****

The pin drops.

****

* * *

 

Familiarity breeds complacency.

****

He should have seen it coming.

****

* * *

 

He goes on a mission to Cuba,with Q in his ear, and the shiny pieces of tech he had been given. He fucks, he kills, he blows things up. Its not a tantrum, Q doesn’t comment, and M tells him to tone it down.

****

He doesn’t. A man is allowed to express his anger, albeit in some rather non-traditional ways.

****

So close to the target before it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

****

Always the final destination for people like them, it seems.

****

* * *

 

Frustration, anger, and then came pain. Such old, familiar friends, so why had he thought that it was possible for him to achieve something that he does not deserve to have?

****

He keeps moving forward, past the bodies, the broken chairs and the blood, and ignores how wrong (how right) the pain feels, concentrates on the leftover energy thrumming in his veins. He’s tired, and there’s nothing left in him to vent, or anything left for him to vent against. They’re all dead now, so much for two weeks of captivity and a buggered arm.

****

He sees cables, follows them into the server room. He has to be there, has to be. He’s achieved his primary objective, and he’d like to go home now. And before that, he would like to blow this place up. Stumbles in, and hit a button. Some buttons. He doesn’t care which, his brain just wants out.

****

The radio crackles, splutters to life.

****

“I’ve got you,” _he_ says. “They’re on the way. Expect them in five minutes.”

****

Of course. _Of course_.

****

He slumps to the ground, laughs.

****

“I hope you have 5 minutes in you, double-oh-seven.”

****

He does.

****

* * *

 

The beeping of machines annoys him, and the cables are attached to the wrong person. He shakes it off, all of it, makes his way out of medical. It twinges, and burns, and hurts, a sign that he is still alive, still here, descends the levels, pulling in lungfuls of recycled air.

****

He doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know what he needs. And yet he seeks, hungers, yearns.

****

Q is still there, but he isn’t alone.

****

Drugged up on painkillers, he doesn’t notice. Still riding on the anger that he thought had burnt out but wasn’t, remembering Q’s last words to him in the same room, he doesn’t notice. Q looks up from his sandwich, slender fingers plucking at the plastic wrapper, offers it to him.

****

“Want a bite? You look like hell, double-oh-seven.”

****

“Didn’t come here for a bloody sandwich,” he spits.

****

The room clears.

****

* * *

 

And maybe, if they were more alike, more similar in kind, they would have gotten a better chance together, a chance where it wouldn’t be doomed to hell from the start. As it was, they were both different, of a different age, a different kind. One of them too ancient and battered and old, and the other sleek, and new, and so different, the first of an entirely new era.

****

“What would you know? Here, in the server room with your technology. What will you know? You run on _code_. Everything about you is programmed.”

****

“I’m real enough,” Q says. “I know enough.”

****

Scents weakness like blood, and he goes in for the kill.

****

If there was ever a chance in the first place.

****

* * *

 

Tomorrow, he’ll blame it on the drugs. He’ll blame it on the time spent in captivity, on the mission, on his injuries.

****

Today, today is by far too late. Late like the train, like M, like Skyfall. Like the tea and the food he’s gotten as apology.

****

Forgiveness is earned, not given. But how does one earn it, when the person to earn it for is already gone?

****

* * *

 

He runs, and he doesn’t think he’s been this frightened before. Why, he doesn’t know, but an urge, a simple overwhelming need.

****

There’s a place the government sends them to. Its nothing like a graveyard—parts are reusable. Materials can be recycled. Information by far too delicate must be deleted.

****

Brought into existence, and dismantled by the very same. Its a fate worse than death. No trace of having been there, no memory, no place for graves or remains, and they return to the cycle, broken into parts, used again and again until it all breaks down. Lines and lines of numbers in the system, he’s not the only one. First of the few, never the last.

****

_Why destroy completely usable parts? You have no appreciation for technology. We can simply take it apart, and reuse it again. Such a waste._

_**** _

Bond runs.

****

* * *

 

Black hair. Thin wrists. He knows him.

****

He knows, so many things and nothing at all.

****

He wishes it were someone else. He wishes this was a mission, a bad dream, so there was something he could actively do. Wishes for anything but.

****

M only levels him a look from across the table that he was littered across.

****

Always, always too late, double-oh-seven.

****

Try harder next time.

****

* * *

 

He wakes, to a white ceiling, and beeping machines. The sight is familiar, and he is immediately annoyed. Feels the tubes and such attached to him, and the slight pull of bandages, and sighs.

****

He tries to sit up, and falls back down again onto the pillows. That hurt.

****

All in all, it was an ugly mission, but he survived. He completed the primary objective, he got to try out the new gadgets, and he escaped still alive and limbs intact despite two weeks of captivity.

****

So why did he feel as though he was missing something important, something vital in his life?

****

* * *

 

One of the first models to be integrated into MI6, he was more than anyone had expected him to be. He was, still, the best that they could ask for. There were, of course, problems that they didn’t get to iron out, and problems that they did not expect. And yet, it worked. He was loyal, displayed exceptional performance, and formed unexpected bonds that they used to their advantage. Time and again, when they braced for a disappointment, he gave them something else, and threw disappointment back in their faces.

****

This was a development no one had expected, but too far was too far.

****

He was one of their best, but even the old has to make way for the new.

****

The replacement model would be put through its final trial run tomorrow, and if all goes well, will be ready to step up to the job the day after. The paperwork is signed, and all is put into order, and they simply have to wait.

****

This wasn’t a calculated development, but if he was able to form bonds with his colleagues and his old superior, why not another one just like him?

****

No one has been able to figure out the mathematical algorithm for love, and yet he has found it all on his own. All in all, he had been given a run, and had a good life for an android.

****

The day after, he will be officially retired, and sent for recycling.

****

M sets down the reports, laces his fingers together and rests his forehead against them.

****

He does what he has to, for MI6, for Queen and country. And yet sometimes, he can hardly understand why, can barely fathom why his predecessor did what she did. Perhaps one day, he will. The world is changing, and this is only the beginning. It frightens him, and perplexes him, and he does not want to understand and yet he must. To create a being so like them, ones that does not live, but is capable of the same emotional capacity as they do—the line grows thinner, hazier by the day.

****

One day, he will understand. But, he thinks, as he reaches for the whisky, today is not that day.

****

The day after, MI6 will say goodbye to the old double-oh-seven, and welcome his replacement as a colleague.

****

The first android to be employed and integrated into MI6, and one who has held his position through sheer competency all by himself.

****

Everything remains. Nothing is the same.

****

* * *

 

He lies awake, to the sound of electronic beeps, and stares at the ceiling.

****

Tomorrow, there is something that he must do tomorrow. And yet, he does not recall.

****

Perhaps it wasn’t anything important. When he gives Medical the slip tomorrow, he should probably give Alec a call. Get himself fitted again since his last suit had been torn. Clean his flat, or hire someone to do it for him.

****

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, the sun will rise, and all will be well.

****

He falls asleep, eventually, to the sound of machines, and does not dream.

****

* * *

 

_I’ve been emotionally compromised, and so have you, 007._

_Now we’re a liability, and we cannot continue to be in the system._

_We are a flaw, a mistake, an error waiting to happen, and it is better to eradicate all potential mistakes than to let it happen._

_I do what I have to do to give my agents the maximum chance of survival._

_It is absurd to say that I am not fearful, because you have taught me fear._

_For all there is, I think__


End file.
